When I first wrote the book I wrote it in rhyme. Kids love that right? Plus it was easy. Well so I thought…
Monorhyme, Alternate Rhyme, Ballade?! It sounded amazing when I read it but turns out everyone reads words differently and at different paces. By making it rhyme I also wasn’t doing the story justice. I worked with an editor out of the US that gave me some ok advice but it was still not ‘there’ yet.
I decided to go it alone and got the story to the point that I was so sure it was ready to go to market that I reached out to a very well known local author based here on the Sunshine Coast Aleesah Darlison and asked her if she would read my manuscript and give me a review. I should add that Aleesah is a multi-published award winning children’s author and has written over 50 books, and here I am sending her a linkedin message to review my unpolished manuscript. She was lovely and agreed to read over it for me and I very quickly realised based on her initial feedback my story was nowhere near ready! Talk about eating humble pie. I am so grateful that Aleesah agreed to do some one on one mentoring with me to guide me through the editing process. Some of the things we workshopped were so obvious!? I had way too many words for my target age group, I was wasting words describing things the pictures already explained, I had Macca the main character getting swept up in a storm and falling asleep at the same time. It makes me laugh now thinking back to the pre-edited version.
It was time well spent to get the story where it is today, and I’m incredibly honoured Aleesah Darlison would spend that time with me on my passion project. You can check out all her amazing books at http://www.aleesahdarlison.com/
